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Consider the act of ocular vision:
There are two elements here; there is the form perceptible to the
sense and there is the medium by which the eye sees that form.
This medium is itself perceptible to the eye, distinct from the
form to be seen, but the cause of the seeing; it is perceived at
the one stroke in that form and on it and, hence, is not
distinguished from it, the eye being held entirely by the
illuminated object. When on the contrary this medium presents
itself alone it is seen directly- though even then actual sight
demands some solid base; there must be something besides the
medium which, unless embracing some object, eludes perception;
thus the light inherent to the sun would not be perceived but for
the solidity of the mass. If it is objected that the sun is light
entire, this would only be a proof of our assertion: no other
visible form will contain light which must, then, have no other
property than that of visibility, and in fact all other visible
objects are something more than light alone.
So it is with the act of vision in the Intellectual Principle.
This vision sees, by another light, the objects illuminated by
the First Principle: setting itself among them, it sees
veritably; declining towards the lower Nature, that upon which
the light from above rests, it has less of that vision. Passing
over the visible and looking to the medium by which it sees, then
it holds the Light and the source of Light.
But since the Intellectual-Principle is not to see this light as
something external we return to our analogy; the eye is not
wholly dependent upon an outside and alien light; there is an
earlier light within itself, a more brilliant, which it sees
sometimes in a momentary flash. At night in the darkness a gleam
leaps from within the eye: or again we make no effort to see
anything; the eyelids close; yet a light flashes before us; or we
rub the eye and it sees the light it contains. This is sight
without the act, but it is the truest seeing, for it sees light
whereas its other objects were the lit not the light.
It is certainly thus that the Intellectual-Principle, hiding
itself from all the outer, withdrawing to the inmost, seeing
nothing, must have its vision- not of some other light in some
other thing but of the light within itself, unmingled, pure,
suddenly gleaming before it;
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